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Tuesday, August 2, 2016

The Struggle of Municipalities in the Global Economy

When I lived in Fort Smith a strange thought would occasionally
occur to me; if the government laid everyone off, would the town even exist
anymore? A huge proportion of the people I met with and dealt with were government
employees. The Territory employs a tremendous proportion of the population.
Fort Smith is a company town where the business is government. We're all there
providing services to each other, so if we all were told to leave would
anything be left?

It was a silly idea. The Salt River First Nation and
other local Dene and Metis population have called the area home for centuries.
In a sense though Fort Smith represent a broader problem in a microcosm. Fort Smith came to be as a missionary outpost
turned into a key transportation hub and into an administrative/government
centre. All of the old functions have fallen away. Instead of a transport link
Fort Smith is now the end of the road and the old industries that gave it life
are now gone.

Fort Smith is an extreme example but is shines light on a
common problem; what are cities not deemed to be key to the global economy or
without natural resources to do? This problem is acutely more obvious in North
America which has seen its industrial sector gutted. In post-industrial North
America what role do we assign our cities that are not global hubs or resource
centres?

Domestic manufacturing and internal trade provided an
impetus to many smaller cities. It provided them with wealth to spend locally
and connections to the broader world. An industrial town could provide a floor
and security for the local population to build small and medium businesses
around. Cities that are thriving in North America can be usually set into a few
categories: global cities, government/academia hubs, resource cities. Global
cities include the obvious New York, Vancouver, San Francisco, etc. These
cities are well integrated into global trade and commerce and have
sophisticated businesses that connect to cities across the world. It should be
noted that these cities should be thought of as city-regions. I am confident
one of the reasons Hamilton, Ontario is showing some vitality is because it is
connected to Toronto. It has gone from a major, independent, industrial city to
a quirky suburb, like Brooklyn. Governments generally don't got out of
business. Cities like Washington and Ottawa weather recessions and bad times
quite well. Cites with provincial or state capitals are likewise buffeted from
the post-industrial economy. Universities and colleges act as the new company
towns in some cities. Pittsburgh basically banked its future on it. Finally,
cities like Calgary and Houston build their livelihood off of resources.

Many of the cities who do not belong in the above
categories have struggled mightily since the 1970s. Some many of these small
and mid-sized cities have tried to tied their wagons to the latest fad, be it
high tech, app development or biotech. The simple truth is, as it seems the
case, that those industries will accrue in academic centres and global cities.
Belleville, Ontario and Gary, Indiana are not going to become hubs for biotech
innovation. Cities who once acted as important transportation or trade points
are now increasingly irrelevant in point-to-point trade and the digital
economy. It is not wrong to say that Torontonians have more in common with the residents
of London, Chicago, and Hong Kong than Windsor, Welland and Brantford.

The abandonment of these kinds of cities and regions have
spurred on resentment and division. If you want to see where some of the 'new'
politics we have been seeing in the United States and United Kingdom has come
from look to those places. Governments have seemed unable to provide meaningful
alternatives to these locales with the departure of industry. Instead, much
like Fort Smith, they perpetuate on government subsidy and on providing
services to the local/regional population. How to solve this problem (or
crisis) will be a defining feature of many of our cities' futures.